Maike Niemeier, the founder of Portcrash, believes that for effective learning children need to form an emotional and physical bond with real-life elements; teaching only digitally would be to abstract. This is why Portcrash is combining digital and analog content and aiming at bridging the gap between traditional childhood education and digital media. Through storytelling and gamification centered around the feisty intergalactic pirate girl Cap’n Portcrash and her crew, children can explore art, physics, chemistry, coding, math, and music in their spare time.
Maike is the creative mind behind Cap’n Portcrash and her crazy crew of pirates. She’s the one who creates the stories, thinks up the extraordinarily long words and wields the paintbrushes and pens. With twenty years of experience in elementary music pedagogy and instrumental teaching, together with her studies of Art and Music Pedagogy at Bielefeld University, she has a firm foundation for offering you a cool learning system.
Maike founded her own school of Art and Music ten years ago while she was still a student, and teaches children, teens and adults. She and her colleagues have run projects in preschools and schools at all levels, with everything from small groups to entire schools of up to 400 children. She has also been teaching music at a secondary school, the Städtisches Gymnasium in Petershagen, for two years. Her father was an elementary school principal, so she’s well versed in formal education systems and knows what’s important to teachers.
Portcrash is her second company, and she runs it parallel to her music school. It uses books which feature QR-coded links to browse games, experiments, and additional materials to educate children in a playful, humorous way while being based on pedagogic principles. Design, haptics, and audio are tailored to provide children with the conditions they need to improve their focus and to strengthen effective learning.
The EdTech startup was founded late 2017 with the aim to make education fun for students, teachers, and parents alike. Alongside the educational games, the Portcrash engineering team also created a licensing system for educators: ‘Rock the Boat with Cap’n Portcrash’.
Apps – all themed around Cap’n Portcrash and her piratey pals – take children age four and up on a crazy, adventurous journey into distant galaxies and steer them towards the learning objectives. According to the website “The apps are based on our scientifically-underpinned learning system; that ensures an optimal learning environment.”
Source & Image: Portcrash UG & Co. KG
In August 2016 Nicola Watkinson was appointed by Austrade to serve as Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner for North America, responsible for its network of offices covering New York, Boston, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, Washington, as well as Toronto and Vancouver in Canada.
As a participant in this cross-cultural education program, RCNY received an update on the project from the Haifa Rotary Club. Dr. Amnon Shefi of Hi-Teach was a major coordinator for this important program. Hands Across Water educated more than one thousand students of Jews and Arabs to work together in search of advanced water solutions which was the theme of the successful year.
Beginning with the diverse and underserved City of Lod, a rainwater harvesting system was constructed at two anchoring institutions – the Ha Mapilim School and the Agricultural Learning Center (Farm School) – serving as a joint, demonstrative tool for ten nearby schools (three Arab Israeli/Palestinian and seven Jewish) to utilize for student’s hands-on learning. A third anchor was added with Gany Aviv School for advanced activities. The innovation and excitement generated by these efforts has served as a catalyst for further cross-cultural exchange amongst the schools, resulting in complementary sustainability projects and an adoption of a culture of conservation.
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Apr 18, 2018 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM at the UN Church Center – 10th floor
Mr. Jonathan Granoff, President of the Global Security Institute, Senior Advisor and Special Representative to the United Nations for the Permanent Secretariat of the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates. Chair of the Task Force on Nuclear Nonproliferation of the International Law Section of the American Bar Association, and Ambassador for Peace and Security of the Parliament of the World’s Religions. Focuses advocacy efforts on the legal, moral, political and spiritual dimensions of peace with a particular emphasis on the rule of law and elimination of nuclear weapons. On numerous advisory and governing boards such as Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, Middle Powers Initiative, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, and the Jane Goodall Institute. Fellow in the World Academy of Arts and Science and recipient of numerous awards such as the Arthur E. Armitage, Sr. Distinguished Alumni Award of Rutgers University School of Law. Award-winning screenwriter of The Constitution: The Document that Created a Nation, and has articles in more than 50 publications and books including: The Sovereignty Revolution, Toward a Nuclear Weapons Free World, Imagining Tomorrow, Analyzing Moral Issues, Perspectives on 911, Toward a World In Balance, Reverence for Life Revisited, and Hold Hope, Wage Peace. Featured guest and expert commentator on hundreds of radio and television programs, and testified as an expert in the US Congress, Parliaments of the UK and Canada, and at the UN numerous times. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.
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